Tools – Flexible, Open and Social Learning

You can fully engage in FOS using a smart device, tablet or phone connected to the internet.

The tools listed below include:

sites or social spaces you can use to establish your online presence and connect with other FOS participants and facilitators
tool to use and consider each day for the given topic

Sites and spaces

The tools listed below will enable you to reach out to others. Don’t try to be in all spaces at once or use all of the listed tools. Try to find out what works best for you. Start with what you know. You will become more familiar with how best to use the suggested technologies as you observe others, ask questions and start experimenting.

If you are an experienced online learner and familiar with other digital tools and social media platforms, please feel free to use them for your learning and share with others so that we can all learn from each other. Groups might want to set-up their own collaborative learning spaces too. Remember, learning happens everywhere. You may also learn with your family/partner or housemates. See what works best for you and your group and let us know if you need any help, ok?

FOS community (recommended)

We have created a FOS community kindly supported by Advance HE Connect for all those who would like to have further, perhaps more extensive discussions than possible via Twitter, especially where you are interested in establishing networks beyond the timeline of the course itself. Anybody is welcome to join this community. Please note the FOS community discussions are driven by the community itself and can be used by any participant as long as they want to engage. Everybody is welcome to join and participate in the discussions. All you need to do is add yourself to the community. First you will need to create an Advance HE Connect account for this platform.

WordPress (recommended)

This FOS course site is built using WordPress. It constructed using pages and postings and it’s free. Think about setting a space up for yourself (see Portfolio below).

Please remember to visit this FOS site frequently to find out more about the course, how it is structured and what comes next. It would be useful to follow this site by clicking on the button Follow FOS (on the right hand side of the homepage) and receive updates directly in your inbox.

Jitsi meetups (recommended)

We would like to trial Jitsi meet an open source platform for our visual synchronous meetups. You will be able to download the Jitsi meet app for Android and Apple devices and join these meet ups but also organise your own.

During the week we will also be teaming up with the Creativity for Learning or short #creativeHE community for the beginning of the #creativeHEjam (12 June) and particularly a guest speaker who will discuss with us the role creativity can play in learning and teaching during the current pandemic and the opportunities it brings. We will let you know which platform we will use for this, ok?

An alternative synchronous video link tool from Google is Meet. This is now freely available.

Portfolio (recommended)

It is a good idea to create a digital portfolio for your reflections and learning as you progress in the course. If you don’t have a portfolio at the moment, consider using WordPress.com or another platform you are familiar with. Blogger or Google docs are good alternative solutions, but there are many other ways for can easily establish an online portfolio. A portfolio will help you collect and develop the evidence of your learning, especially useful if you will be working towards a module in your own institution or professional recognition.

We encourage you to comment on posts contributed by other participants and encourage others to comment on your reflections. Digital portfolios provide an excellent opportunity to foster dialogue and debate and help us consider new angles and perspectives if we are open to listen and engage with voices that are different from ours. Remember to add the hashtag to your titles and connect your portfolio to your Twitter account (see social media settings in your dashboard) so that when posting something linked to FOS it is shared more widely with others.

Google Drive iPad Portfolio from EdTechTeacher on Vimeo.

Twitter (recommended)

We will use Twitter as an additional communication channel. Please consider creating a Twitter account if you don’t have one already and start checking the hashtag for the course iteration. The course Twitter feed will also be displayed on the the homepage of the FOS site. If you need help, please include the hashtag into your tweet so that peers and facilitators can pick it up and help you.

Google doc (recommended)

Google docs are useful for completing specific learning tasks, particularly when working with others. You can also use it as a learning portfolio space to capture the process of learning and showcase what you have learnt.

Yo Teach! (recommened)

We would like to trial YoTeach! and use this collaborative platform that enables something similar to Twitter but is a dedicated space for those interested to participate in a specific activity, synchronously and asynchronously. So no annoyed followers that don’t want to be part of what we are doing at a specific moment. We will be able to easily post written comments, photographs and use a simple drawing feature too. We can’t wait to see how this works.